A Term of Honor

By Barbara Ehrenreich

THE CONNIE CHUNG-KATHLEEN GINGRICH INCIDENT, in which the famous anchorwoman lured House Speaker Newt Gingrich's mother into revealing that he has called the First Lady a "bitch," raises a number of thought-provoking issues. Should Ms. Chung be redeployed from CBS to the CIA, in some department of interrogation and espionage? Should Bill let this incident mar his emerging romance with Newt? Should Mr. Gingrich be Speaker of anything, or should his mouth first be washed out with soap?

There is another issue, of even larger public import, raised by the insult itself: What should a woman do when a fellow calls her a bitch? We already know Hillary Clinton's response. She invited the perpetrator and his mom to her house for a visit and consulted with women from the press on how to yet again "soften her image." But could there perhaps be some other form of response, one that would be less humiliating to Ms. Clinton and the entire female race?

; Verbal-insult trading is admittedly not a viable option. Hillary Clinton may think a certain Congressman whose name rhymes with "thin witch" is a bastard or an s.o.b., but neither appellation has anything like the force of bitch. The meanest things you can say about a man boil down to attacks on a woman: the mother insult, implying subhuman status and moralsand men can experience its sting only indirectly, at a generation's remove.

The asymmetry of the available insults reinforces the oft-noted dilemma of women in public life: how to be business-like without inviting perceptions like "ball-buster" or bitch. O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark had to be remanded to the make-over salon where she was recoiffed and taught to make tender references to her offspring in public. Hillary Clinton, perhaps more than any woman in public life, has been subject to relentless review by the gender police. Even when she stood steadfastly by her man during the Gennifer Flowers incident, she was savaged for doing so with insufficient humility and possibly dissing Tammy Wynette.

In Hillary Clinton's case, the problem has never been reducible to a mere matter of style. Our First Lady does not go around in a leather bustier or pick her teeth with a riding crop. If she has a problem -- and clearly she does -- it's that somehow, characterologically speaking, she doesn't add up. A vigorous advocate of the poor, she devoted much of the '80s, yuppie fashion, to dubious schemes for the accumulation of loot. A feminist, she's been faulted for doing little to advance women's careers in her husband's Administration. Motivated by the noblest intentions no doubt, she nonetheless came up with what was, from almost any ideological perspective, the health- care plan from hell.

So you could call her many things: yuppie scum, liberal, elitest, hypocrite, sellout to the patriarchy. But bitch would hardly seem to apply.

In fact, Hillary Clinton's real problem may be that she's never been bitchy enough. Every criticism directed her way elicits cringing new attempts to make nice. After her '92 cookie gaffe, in which she asserted she'd had better things to do, as a Governor's wife, than bake cookies for Chelsea and Bill, she took to compensatory cookie making on an industrial scale. Stung by Whitewater allegations, she did penance by giving a press conference in girlish pink. What can we expect if the Gingrich remark provokes yet another make-over? A floor-length Mother Hubbard gown of handloomed calico?

The only dignified response for Hillary Clinton or any woman similarly maligned is to stand up, straighten her spine and unflinchingly embrace the epithet. In the matter of insult taming, we have some exemplary role models. Gay militants now proudly call themselves "queer." Black rappers appropriated "bad"and even "nigger." If you want to de-fang an insult, you happily claim it as your own.

There was nothing to stop Hillary Clinton from grinning and announcing, "So I'm a bitch, wanna make something of it?"

Admittedly, that's a scary step. Women as a group are not psychologically equivalent to blacks or gays. We may want to overthrow the patriarchal equation between "daddy" and "boss," but inwardly we want daddy to love us too, or what amounts to the same thing for the general public to think we're "nice." Women, and perhaps especially white middle-class women, are trained to believe the only way to win love and approval is to be a good little girl until well into cronehood.

But the sad fact, which neither Clinton seems capable of grasping, is that love is not a perquisite of public life. To stand for anything momentarily unpopular, like health reform or help for the poor, is to risk being momentarily reviled. So far, Hillary Clinton's responses to the inevitable flak have been painful to witness. She dishonors her whole sex when she apologizes, runs back to the image molders or threatens to "soften" herself to the consistency of a milk-dipped chocolate-chip cookie. Personally, and speaking from the shelter of relative anonymity, I would be honored to have Newt Gingrich, even by proxy, call me a bitch.